Aether (ê´ther)
nounGreek Mythology.The poetic personification
of the clear upper air breathed by the Olympians.

[Latin, from Greek aithêr,
upper air.]

ether

ether (ê´ther) noun1.Any of a class of organic compounds in which
two hydrocarbon groups are linked by an oxygen atom.2.A volatile, highly flammable liquid, C2H5OC2H5,
derived from the distillation of ethyl alcohol with sulfuric acid
and widely used as a reagent, a solvent, and an anesthetic. Also called
diethyl ether, ethyl ether.3.The regions of space beyond the earth's atmosphere;
the heavens.4.The element believed in ancient and medieval civilizations
to fill all space above the sphere of the moon
and to compose the stars and planets.

And New York is the most
beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like
the night there. . . . Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into
the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our
will.Ezra Pound (1885-1972), U.S. poet,
critic. "Patria Mia," in New Age (London, 18 Sept. 1912).

1973 - Ethernet

Robert Metcalfe devised the
Ethernet method of network
connection at the Xerox
Palo Alto Research Center. He wrote: "On May 22, 1973, using my Selectric
typewriter ... I wrote ... "Ether Acquisition" ... heavy with handwritten
annotations -- one of which was "ETHER!" -- and with hand-drawn diagrams
-- one of which showed `boosters' interconnecting branched cable, telephone,
and ratio ethers in what we now call an internet....
If Ethernet was invented in any one memo, by any one person, or on any
one day, this was it."

"My wireless transmitter does
not use Hertzian waves, which are a grievous myth, but sound waves
in the aether..." -- Nikola
Tesla

Peter Carroll, in discussing the theoretical
underpinnings of modern 'Chaosmagic',
raises the concept of ether from its dusty grave in order to address the problem
of instantaneous (faster-than-light) information
transmission. According to this view, ether is a dimension which is 'orthogonal'
to that of time,
or is 'a kind of shadow substance', wherein patterns of probability affect material
events. It must be pointed out that this is different to the classical concept
of ether as a transmissive physical substance, which was postulated in order to
explain the propagation of light
waves through a vacuum. The Michaelson-Morley experiment in 1887 supposedly dismissed
the notion of ether's physical existence, paving the way for Einstein's special
theory of relativity (Zukav, 1978). For Carroll, although ether has a real
existence, it is not a physical substance, while still affecting physical events
simultaneously across space. This phenomenon is important to conceptions of magic,
which have magicians causing things to occur across space and time without any
physical contact
between their conjurations and the resulting phenomena.

Carroll points out that his conception
of ether is merely a model to explain existing phenomena, and should not be
thought of as necessarily having an independent existence outside of this conception,
just as physicists make models to explain events in physical interactions. According
to the magical model, ether 'acts as though it were a form of information emitted
by matter that is instantaneously available everywhere and has some power to
shape the behaviour of other matter' (Carroll, p21). This vision of a fundamentally
interconnected, dynamic universe is in a sense a return to an ancient, Aristotelian
vision of an organic, interconnected cosmos; it is also a concept of reality
which is particularly apt in terms of chaos theory, with its fractal
maps of infinite
space.

"Ether, having once failed as a concept, is in the process
of being reinvented. Information
is the ultimate mediational ether"

Recapitulating, we may say that
according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical
qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According
to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for
in such space there not only would be no propagation of light,
but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods
and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But
this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic
of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time.
The idea of motion may not be applied to it."

From "Ether and the Theory of Relativity"
an address delivered on May 5th, 1920, in the University of Leyden by Albert
Einstein.

A
seventeenth century chemical sign for oil. Oil was also drawn , ,
and in many other ways. Different types of oil also had their special
signs.

Three golden circular forms is also an old
sign for pawnbrokers and money-lenders. Pawnbrokers are still
often symbolized by the similar . Note that
means silver in some modern mining contexts, and is a sign for rain
in certain meteorological systems. Compare with ,
clubs,
and ,
one of the signs for silver in alchemy. In the chemistry of the eighteenth century
also could stand for aether, ether. That could have meant
the ether known by todays chemists, the substance used in nineteenth centrury
medicine as an anaesthetic, or it might have meant ether as that element
formerly held to form the material of the heavenly spheres from themoon
to the fixed stars.

sample: "the many moments...
when you feel as if, your own boundaries
are dissolving... as if, somehow you're, merging into the universe...
at the end, i felt a great weight had been taken off me... instead of
feeling like it was the end of something, i felt like it was the beginning...
like it was something had opened up... that things could be seen in a
different light..."